What's remarkable about rock's greatest lyricists is how little they have in common. Some are verbose and prosaic; others are succinct and poetic. What they all share, however, is a talent the novelist William Burroughs once extolled. "Art," Burroughs said, "should tell us what we know, that we don't know that we know." The following 10 songwriters do just that.
Bob Marley
Bob Marley's words gave sustenance, hope, and the promise of a better future to downtrodden people around the world. A poet on par with Dylan, the reggae legend used music as a common language with which to bring people together. "I'm pleading to mankind … Let's get together and feel all right," he sang, on 'One Love."
Mick Jagger
Beneath the charisma and the swaggering presence lies rock's most under-appreciated wordsmith. Like the blues greats he idolizes, Jagger is a master of double entendre and sexual innuendo. A line like, "She blew my nose and then she blew my mind" contains multitudes.
John Lennon
John Lennon could be dreamy and utopian ("Imagine"), unabashedly romantic ("Woman"), or childishly vindictive ("How Do You Sleep?"). At his best, however, the late Beatle mixed a love of wordplay with a caustic wit that skewered its target (check out the lyrics to "Gimme Some Truth"). At heart, Lennon was the Lenny Bruce of rock and roll.
Lou Reed
Along with Pete Townshend, Lou Reed was among the first rock artists to explore the character-based themes in a way often associated with great novels. Songs such as "Heroin" and "Walk on the Wild Side" looked unflinchingly at New York's underworld, while ballads like "Pale Blue Eyes" and "Heavenly Arms" evidenced a profoundly romantic soul. Townshend himself once said Reed "is like an Elmore Leonard crossed with Charles Bukowski - he's actually better than both in my opinion."
Sly Stone
Like Jagger, Sly Stone has rarely gotten his due as a master of concise imagery and hook-laden phrases. In "Everyday People," for instance, Stone playfully poked a finger in the eye of bigots by inserting lines about intolerance (on all sides of the color spectrum) into a child's melody. "And so on and so on and scooby dooby doo-bee"? Pure magic.
Paul Westerberg
"Playin' make-up, wearin' guitar." Have any five words better summed up -- with a poet's finesse -- every girl or glam-inclined boy who possessed a romantic yearning to be a genuine rock and roller? Westerberg's songs, especially those written during his time with the Replacements, are loaded with such gems. At his best, Westerberg channeled both Dylan and Hank Williams.
Jim Morrison
Jim Morrison's fate, of course, was to become a rock icon rather than the Dionysian poet he longed to be. His lyrics were often suffused with melodrama, and the oedipal references in "The End" were silly. But tracks like "Riders on the Storm" and "People Are Strange" showed him to be a master of romantic verse and unconventional rhyme.
Chuck Berry
Who, besides Chuck Berry, could come up with a word like "motorvatin'"? Using three main subjects -- cars, girls, and school -- Berry conjured up a world that every adolescent could relate to. 'Popular or general situations and conditions in lyrics have always been my greatest objective," the rock legend wrote, in his autobiography.
Bruce Springsteen
His torrential outpourings of words and images sometimes make Bruce Springsteen seem like the rock's answer to Walt Whitman. Or perhaps to Jack Kerouac. Like Kerouac, Springsteen songs strike at the heart of what's unique about America -- specifically, the idea of the "promised land that's rooted deep in the American psyche. No one holds up a mirror to us all better than Springsteen.
Bob Dylan
What Lou Reed is to rock and roll prose, Dylan is to rock and roll poetry. Whether he's offering up a Woody Guthrie-style ballad anthem ("Blowin' in the Wind"), contemplating the apocalypse ("A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall") or mining the shattered terrain of a failed marriage (most of Blood on the Tracks), Dylan's way with a verse has been pitch-perfect. That he's never come off as pretentious might be his most remarkable feat of all.